In two clinical trials, patients showed sharp improvement in blood sugar control and many were able to stop their medications.

In findings that promise radical changes in the care of the 20 million U.S. patients with Type 2 diabetes, two new clinical trials have shown that weight-loss surgery brings about dramatically greater improvement of blood sugar control in obesediabetics than standard diabetes care.

In both studies, even rigorously supervised regimens of diet, exercise and medications failed to bring blood sugar under good control after a year or more. In contrast, two teams of researchers — one in Italy, the other in the United States — reported that surgical procedures to reduce the size and sometimes the placement of the stomach often allowed subjects to discontinue diabetes medications within weeks.

Both studies were published online Mondayin the New England Journal of Medicine. One of them, by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and Harvard University, was presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago.

In an accompanying editorial in the journal, diabetes specialists Paul Zimmet and K. George M.M. Alberti wrote that although surgical weight-loss procedures were "not yet" a panacea for the worldwide epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, the new research "suggests they should not be seen as a last resort."

"Such procedures might well be considered earlier in the treatment of obese patients with Type 2 diabetes," Zimmet and Alberti wrote. Zimmet is a specialist at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and Alberti is at King's College in London.

"Now we know that treating diabetes can — and should — be a primary reason for doing this surgery," said Dr. Lee M. Kaplan, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center. Such surgery should not be the first line of treatment, Kaplan said, but it should become a fallback for patients whose blood sugar control remains poor despite medications and lifestyle changes.

"We ought to be using it more," he said.

Both studies examined patients who had undergone one of three bariatric surgery procedures: biliopancreatic diversion, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy. In addition to improved blood sugar control, all experienced significantly greater weight loss than those on standard drug treatment.

Both studies also reported that subjects who had surgery saw more improvement in some, though not all, cholesterol measures than those on standard diabetes therapy.

In general, the studies found that the scale of improvements in patients' metabolic function and weight loss tracked the degree to which the surgical procedures reshaped the gastrointestinal system. Biliopancreatic diversion, the most radical of the operations, appeared to produce the most radical improvements, followed by Roux-en-Y bypass and sleeve gastrectomy.

Neither study looked at lap-band surgery, which is less invasive and accounts for a large proportion of bariatric procedures in the U.S.

In biliopancreatic diversion, part of the stomach is removed to reduce its capacity; in Roux-en-Y bypass, the stomach is shrunk by stapling off a large part of it. In both procedures, the stomach is relocated so that its contents are routed past much of the lower intestine, where the most calories and nutrients are absorbed.

Sleeve gastrectomy does not move the stomach or alter the way food enters or leaves it; but it does refashion the stomach into a banana-shaped tube with about 20% of its former capacity.

The U.S. study examined 150 people, 100 of whom received surgery — half had sleeve gastrectomy and half had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass — and 50 who got intensive medication, monitoring, and diet and exercise counseling.

Those in the surgery group dramatically reduced their need for medication of all kinds. Many subjects were taking 10 to 12 medications daily, including insulin injections, said Dr. Philip R. Schauer, director of the Cleveland Clinic Bariatric and Metabolic Institute and lead author of the study.

At the end of one year, 78% of those who had gastric bypass and 51% of those who had sleeve gastrectomy were off all diabetes medications. The proportion of subjects taking lipid-lowering medication such as a statin dropped from 86% to 27% among those who had gastric bypass, and was cut in half among those who had sleeve gastrectomy.

"Were they happy? They were ecstatic," Schauer said. "With one, single intervention, the patient gets so much benefit."

In the Italian study, 60 obese diabetic patients were divided into three groups: one got "conventional care," including medications; a second group underwent Roux-en-Y bypass; and a third had biliopancreatic diversion.

At two years, 95% of those in the biliopancreatic diversion group experienced a remission of their diabetes, as did 75% of those in the Roux-en-Y group. Though blood sugar control improved in the conventional therapy group, there were no remissions among those subjects.